I have to do cardio rehab 3 times a week, so I go to the hospital’s’ outpatient center where they have the exercise equipment. There, above the exercise equipment, they have . . . → Read More: A Tale of Three Televisions

The latest Fox News controversy was Megyn Kelly and her insistence that Santa Claus and Jesus are white, in response to an article by Slate columnist Aisha Harris on the concept that Santa Claus should not be depicted only as an older white man. Watching the video of Kelly’s assertion showed that she was not speaking in jest and seemed rather offended that Santa could be depicted as anything other than an older white man. Ms. Harris proposed that Santa be depicted as a penguin.

Why Santa Looks the Way He Does

The present image of Santa Claus is based on Thomas Nast’s illustration for the Clement Moore poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” published in 1823. Mythical and fictional characters are going to take the form of the demographic group that is looking at them. Since the US is majority white, the depictions will be white, including the legendary 1st-Century itinerant Jewish rabbi from Nazareth in the Roman province of Judea. He is normally shown as if he was born in Bethlehem, PA rather than Bethlehem, Judea.

Going around the world, Jesus is generally shown in the form of the society in question. He is Japanese in Japan, Ethiopian in Ethiopia, and so on.

A comedy aside: I’ve listened to quite a few comic routines on the depiction of Santa Claus, especially by black comics. Of course Santa is white; he has to be. A black man would never get to creep around people’s houses late at without someone calling 911!

White Skin as Iconic Norm

Megyn Kelly, along with her defenders, all agree that the iconic white, “normal” version of Santa, Jesus, and any other major figures, is the only one that shall be in the public domain. Even pseudo-libertarian right-wing former radio host Neal Boortz interrupted his retirement to weigh in on the issue. He said that he would complain that Martin Luther King, Jr. is always depicted as black. Seriously? He is going to complain about the accurate depiction of an actual person as opposed to the depiction of a fictional character? This goes to the iconic level that whiteness has to the majority, that Boortz would be so entitled to say something that stupid out loud. Continue reading Megyn Kelly and Fox News’ White Santa—A Cautionary Tale

Sarah Palin has managed to turn feigned anger into a pretty damned lucrative pseudo-career. Now on her second stint with Fox News and coming off a headlining appearance at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual “Road to Majority” shindig, Palin’s newest gambit is to imply that she might cut and run from the Republican Party. The GOP power structure would probably be relieved were this to happen, but only to a point. Palin’s enduring popularity with zero-information conservatives could be the catalyst for a significant number of traditionally reliable Republican voters bolting for weirder pastures.

Asked by a Twitter questioner whether she and rightwing radio loudmouth Mark Levin might “be willing to build a ‘Freedom Party’ if [the] GOP continues to ignore conservatives,” Palin got right down to some of that fancy pageant walkin’ that remains her only true aptitude:

“I love the name of that party — the ‘Freedom Party,’” Palin said. “And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are going to start saying, ‘You know, what’s wrong with being independent,’ kind of with that libertarian streak that much of us have.”

Yes, uh, much of them do. Putting aside the absurdity of her characterization of Republicans as the “party of Lincoln and Reagan” – which is like calling Chicago the “city of Studs Terkel and John Wayne Gacy” – I’m guessing she could no more name a plank in the party platform than she could name a newspaper back in 2008. Palin continued, in commendably fluent Palinese:

“In other words, we want government to back off and not infringe upon our rights. I think there will be a lot of us who start saying ‘GOP, if you abandon us, we have nowhere else to go except to become more independent and not enlisted in a one or the other private majority parties that rule in our nation, either a Democrat or a Republican.’ Remember these are private parties, and you know, no one forces us to be enlisted in either party.”

Darn right they don’t, Governor. I won’t get my hopes up that this is anything more than you pandering to your fans, but if your comments were at all sincere, I look forward to you and your acolytes fancy pageant walkin’ your splinter cell, and the GOP, straight to permanent electoral oblivion.

TWO: Through a Glass Snarkly

Barack Obama’s first term was barely underway when I experienced my first queasy twinges of disappointment. At first, it was nothing overt, nothing readily explicable; a strangely off-kilter statement here, an abrupt about-face there. Soon came the willful misrepresentations, blatant distortions, even bald-faced lies. Almost before I knew it, I found myself feeling more and more burned, betrayed, deceived. The sentiments gradually intensified over months and years, eventually becoming something resembling utter, exasperated disgust.

I’m not referring to the President’s policies and actions (even ones I oppose adamantly, such as Race to the Top, the escalation in Afghanistan, some woeful compromises on energy policy and the environment, and some pretty questionable appointments). I’m referring to the hypertensive squawking that now passes for “criticism” across a broad swath of the cyber-left, and what has devolved into a churlish and counterproductive reaction to this presidency.

The recurring clichés tell a lot of the story. He “lied” about closing Gitmo. He “lied” about ending George Bush’s wars. He “dragged his feet” on DADT and DOMA. He “rolled over” on even trying to implement a universal, single-payer health care system and then “shrugged” at the failure of the public option. He “bailed out” Wall Street and “ignored” Main Street. He “embraced” the use of drones and expanded it to new operational theaters. He “ramped up” persecution of altruistic medical marijuana operations and courageous whistleblowers alike. He brutally “suppressed” the Occupy movement. He “wasted” his “huge” majorities from 2009 to 2011 and got “nothing” accomplished. He eschewed using the “power” of the bully pulpit (while giving “nice” speeches). And now he is “revealed” to have taken the surveillance state to new heights of “intrusive” overreach and “Orwellian” excess.

Throughout the Bush years, I depended on a host of progressive pundits and bloggers to keep me informed, encouraged and emboldened. Some of the very same people now seem more interested in inciting a howling mob to stand in a perpetual downpour outside the gates of the citadel, declaring as one that this presidency and this President have been failures. For some, it seems as if Barack Obama was de-legitimized merely by winning office and actually having to govern.

At the heart of much of the “criticism” is a sense that the “critics” feel jilted somehow, that the duplicitous Barack Obama represented himself as FDR Redux, that he campaigned as a fire-breathing progressive, that he was supposed somehow to govern simply by asking himself what George Bush would have done on any issue and then immediately doing the diametrical opposite. I don’t doubt that some of this is genuine and heartfelt, but it’s still heavily underpinned by the fierce urgency of unreasonable expectations and an unhealthy ignorance of basic civics, not to mention an oddly selective critical faculty that takes nothing the government says at face value but will readily suspend skepticism over the latest inane Paulite bullshit, or worse.

Equally illuminating is the strident name-calling found at the larger nominally progressive discussion sites (one of which purports to exist in part to “elect more Democrats”). Expressing confidence in the Democratic Party and the President, or articulating any degree of comfort with the notion of incremental change and willingness to accept the frustrations of compromise and misstep is simply courting vituperation. The epithets this supposed heresy solicits, some dating all the way back to early 2009, have become more and more meaningless as they have become more and more venomous: DINO, DLCer, Third Wayer, Vichy Dem, sellout, apologist, propagandist, fanboi, Kool-Aid drinker, authoritarian, worshipper. It’s debate by tantrum.

Add to this an astonishing compulsion to play the victim. Rahm Emmanuel called me retarded! I’ve been hippie-punched! The Catfood Commission wants to kill my granny! Robert Gibbs dissed the Professional Left, and I’m a leftist so he obviously meant me! Obama said I’m all wee-weed up! Obama told me to eat my peas!

A lot of this is grandstanding, theatrical ego-tripping; start with, say, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West and you can draw a direct line right to the oh-so-aggrieved message board bloviators who insist in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary that Obama is worse than Bush, to a frenetic chorus of hurrahs. The new frontier of perpetual outrage is limitless; anyone can stake a claim.

And then there’s race. The last thing in the world I want to believe is that any sincere liberal would have a problem with the President’s skin color, but comments from some quarters about his supposed passivity and ineptitude don’t sound very different to me from accusations of shiftlessness. There’s a rank ugliness about some of this that’s hard to fathom if it’s anything other than racism.

These things aren’t universal, of course. There are still rational voices on the left side of the Internet, and I count myself very grateful to be aligned with some of them right here on this site. Those voices don’t shy away from honest criticism where honest criticism is due. As well, only a fool would believe that the Obama Administration hasn’t mishandled and misjudged the progressive cyber-community on more than one occasion. But the potential impact of the digital grassroots has been blunted mostly by the shocking willingness of so many to wallow in disinformation and histrionics. The promise of a synergy between elected power and a vigorous leftosphere leveraging technology for information sharing and activism is lost in a miasma of all-caps paranoia and misdirected anger. A community organizer can’t organize a community that refuses to be organized. Continue reading Take Five (The Anger Games edition)

In vivid contrast, Georgia legislator Paul Battles, being a pragmatic guy, thought and thought and thought about how best to protect children, and after all that thinking came up with House Bill 35:

The Georgia House of Representatives Rules Committee will consider a bill this week that would let school systems arm their staff members. House Bill 35 allows school systems to designate administrators, teachers, or other staff members to carry concealed weapons.

Now, before you go making any mistaken assumptions about Battles, a – surprise! – Republican, he emphatically rejects the suggestion that he’s, you know, a gun nut or something:

“From the very beginning, I’ve said this is a school security piece of legislation,” said Battles. “It’s not about guns. It’s about securing our schools.”

House Bill 35 immediately made me think of Mrs. Hale, my 6th grade teacher, who had a pronounced esotropic strabismus. Forgive me, Mrs. Hale, but I’m very glad you were never packing in our placid Savannah classroom. That I know of, anyway.

The bill passed out of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee last week. And Rep. Battles says that was the biggest hurdle, adding, “I’m sure we’ll have a lively debate on the floor, but I feel like it has great momentum.”

Oh. Great, then.

But inane legislation in Georgia is often a bipartisan thing. State Rep. Earnest Smith, a – crap! – Democrat, is all riled up about Photoshop, especially when it’s used to make fun of Earnest Smith:

… Smith pointed, as proof of the problem, to a picture of his head that was recently edited onto a porn star’s body. That image was created by a blogger who used the image to mock Smith.

Last word to Andre Walker of Georgia Politics Unfiltered, the pixel surgeon responsible for the digital transplant:

“I cannot believe Rep. Earnest Smith thinks I’m insulting him by putting his head on the body of a well-built porn star.”

TWO: “Nothing has changed.”

Attendees at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference can expect to see the likes of Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Allen West and Marco Rubio whip up the sort of rank gumbo of exaggerations, distortions, outright falsehoods and nutrition-free bromides that has kept previous CPAC crowds in drooling thrall.

Indications are that Alaska voters have put down their bongs and would now prefer Hillary Clinton over Palin by a 16-point margin in a hypothetical presidential election cage match. Even better, Public Policy Polling also asked respondents to choose their preference of Congress or Palin, and Congress, for all its legendary disapproval ratings, beat Palin 50% to 35%.

And wait, there’s less!

AMERICABlog pointedly notes that CPAC 2013 will again feature the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, a man determined to live the rest of his wretched life being less popular than gonorrhea, but the conclave has once again barred GOProud, a high-profile gay conservative organization.

“We got kicked out last year because we are gay,” tweeted GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia. “Nothing has changed. We won’t be at CPAC.”

However unintentionally, Mr. LaSalvia has just given CPAC a perfect new slogan. “Nothing has changed,” indeed.

THREE: Squawking Heads Redux

In light of recent news that Palin and Fox News have parted company, followed shortly after by the network axing Dick Morris (the World’s Wrongest ManTM), you might be concerned that Fox is going to suffer an acute stupidity deficit. Fear not. They’ve announced with great fanfare that both Herman Cain and Scott Brown have joined the Fox conservative commentator crew.

Proving that he has never actually watched the network, Cain enthused:

“I’m excited about joining the FOX family as a contributor because it is an opportunity to be one more voice for intelligent thinking in America.”

Cain hit the ground running, which is to say he ran aground, in his first appearance with Bill O’Reilly. When the discussion turned to President Obama’s popularity, Cain gave viewers this taste of his intelligent thinking:

“We have a severe ignorance problem with the people who are so mesmerized by his popularity that they are not looking at the facts…

“Martin Luther King Jr. said 50 years ago in 1963 something that is so appropriate to today… There is nothing more dangerous than serious ignorance, and that’s what we have and he gets away with it with the help of establishment media.”

Really? Cain’s new employer has spent more than a decade atop the cable news network heap, which strikes me as pretty much about as establishment as you can get, but maybe I just have a severe ignorance problem.

Brown… told Hannity that the pace of special elections would have put him in five campaigns in six years and that he might have had to raise another $30 to $50 million, only to “participate in a Congress that’s really dysfunctional and extremely partisan.” Instead, he said, “I felt I could make a difference being on this show…”

The Amalgamated School of Social Hatred and Organized Lunatic Entrepreneurial Studies, Inc., a for-profit corporation fully accredited by the Arizona Department of Education, is a joint venture of FreedomWorks, the Fox News Network and the Christian . . . → Read More: New Trade School Teaches Students to Profit from Hate

I was at once appalled and amused by your comments during your appearance on The Daily Show. But then, I am always appalled and amused when it comes to the topic of the so-called “news media” these days; appalled by the lack of actual news reporting, and amused that people like yourself continue to pretend that what you offer is even remotely connected to actual journalism.

Stewart opened the interview with, “Let’s talk about Paul Ryan. All I have heard from the news divisions across network platforms is how thrilled they are to have Paul Ryan – now they can finally talk substance. When is that going to start happening?”

Your response, “As soon as we exhaust all of our reporting on his driving of the Wiener Mobile while a young man,” was witty and laughter-inducing, as is appropriate for a “fake news” program. The problem is the remark is much closer to the truth than it should be. And that, sir, is no laughing matter.

The Wiener Mobile story is just the kind of nonsense we have come to expect from the TV news media – not in addition to actual news, but in place of it.

As Mr. Stewart pointedly asked: “What is preventing the media from discussing more substantive issues before the introduction of Paul Ryan, and then since the introduction, and then, let’s say, you know, after the election?”

That is the very question on the minds of millions of viewers who are tired of the fact that the mainstream news has become news-o-tainment – replete with snappy graphics, eye-catching effects, and very little of anything of substance.

Your reply, “Well, as you know, there are a lot of distractions in this world …,” was appropriately countered by Mr. Stewart’s comment: “No, I don’t.”

More to the point, sir – “No, WE don’t.” We have difficulty understanding how the so-called news media is so easily distracted away from the actual goddamned news it is purportedly your job to report.

“Wait until people get a bite out of (Ryan’s) voting record. Wait until more people understand the vote on TARP. Wait ‘til we get down the road.”

With all due respect, sir, why should the viewing public have to wait for the facts about Ryan, or the facts about anything else? Oh, that’s right – you were distracted.

“Today, specifically, as I said tonight, was a terrible day for discourse in a democracy. With eighty-four days left to go until the election; you had Biden’s comment last night. Rudy Giuliani comes out today, says Biden isn’t smart enough to be president. You had Romney upset because of Biden last night. And you had Team Obama hitting back at Romney. We can’t, as a country, keep doing this.”

The truth of the matter is that the country isn’t doing this – you and your colleagues are. The many distractions of which you speak are of your own making. How often have we seen these types of non-stories completely overtake nightly news broadcasts?

So Rudy Giuliani said Biden isn’t smart enough to be vice president? When was the last time anyone actually cared about what Rudy had to say about anything – other than TV news journalists who treat every utterance by people like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump as though they matter?

And yet this is what we are subjected to, day in and day out, by people like yourself – sixty seconds of what went on in the world today, followed by an endless stream of opinions, comments and remarks by people only the media itself finds fascinating.

Look, Mr. Williams, it’s simple. When I tune into the news, I actually want the facts about what happened today, and just the facts. I am not the least bit interested in what any pundit, political strategist, has-been politician, or reality show fifteen-minutes-of-famer has to say.

Given the facts, I am more than capable of forming my own conclusions. But it is the facts that are invariably dismissed by the media as not sexy enough, not grabby enough, and somehow not important enough to be proffered without being jazzed up for the viewing public, who – or so you and your colleagues seem to think – want to be distracted by the he said/she said war-of-words between political camps. We don’t.

There is one event that I knew heralded the decline of TV news journalism, and that is the fact that newscasters such as yourself did not immediately distance yourselves from what Fox News was doing from its inception. I would have expected real journalists to decry the concept of an alleged “news network” skewing the news in such an obvious way, and blatantly acting as the propaganda arm of the Republican party. I would have expected journalists with integrity to state, without hesitation, that such obvious bias in reporting the news was contrary to the principles of true journalism.

Instead, the other news broadcasters looked at Fox’s numbers and began to emulate their techniques: offer opinion rather than fact, offer commentary in place of an unbiased presentation of current events, offer airtime to politicians without ever questioning their statements of alleged fact. So much for putting journalistic integrity above ratings.

Your reference to Sy Syms, and his hallmark phrase that “an educated consumer is our best customer,” was dead on the money. Said you: “And I thought, well good on the late Sy Syms, because he was right about being a haberdasher, but he was also right about our business.”

That begs the question, sir: just how educated are the consumers of TV news these days? Do they know what’s going on – or do they only know about the “distractions” you serve up as news? Do they know Joe Biden’s accomplishments or failures as a vice president – or do they only know what Rudy Giuliani has to say about the matter?

Was the TV news viewing audience apprised of the facts before the invasion of Iraq – or were they spoon-fed opinions by newscasters wholly-owned by corporations with lucrative government contracts that would result in increased profits if the nation was at war?

It’s said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. What makes for stranger and much more dangerous bedfellows is corporate-sponsored news programming that tailors the news to fit their own agenda. I’ve no doubt that Sy Syms would be appalled at such a state of affairs. Continue reading An Open Letter to Brian Williams

While the gulf between the ideologies of the left and the right has often been a wide one, there is something more at play these days, and that is the downright stupidity of Republican voters.

One can debate the virtues of big government versus small government, the distribution of wealth, fair taxation, the handling of deficits – and any number of things the parties tend to disagree on. But you can’t argue with stupid. And I, for one, refuse to even try.

I admit to being an intellectual snob, especially when it comes to politics. I have no patience for people who literally know nothing about how government works, but ramble on incoherently as though watching FOX News makes them experts on the topic. I have no patience for FOX News either: a collection of bobble-headed idiots who spew GOP propaganda on a 24/7 basis to those too dumb and/or lazy to find a legitimate news source, or investigate the outrageous “news” stories they are fed day in, day out.

I have no desire to interact with people who believe that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim – despite all evidence to the contrary – simply because that’s what they want to believe, the facts be damned.

I have no want to discuss anything to do with the governance of my country with those who insist that the USA was founded as a Christian nation, and who view the separation of Church and State as something dreamed up by liberals, rather than being something enshrined in the Constitution.

I cannot be bothered to try and persuade the oh-so-proudly ignorant that signs and bumper-stickers that say “Keep the goverment’s hands off my Medicare”, “Inglich is our offical langage,” or decry the idea that healthcare should never include a “pubic option” that their stupidity places them in the category of the embarrassingly laughable.

I have no compulsion to communicate with those who cherry-pick random quotes from the Bible as support for their bigotry and their prejudices, while at the same time ignoring the words and teachings of Jesus Christ – whom they profess to love and revere, but only when convenient.

I have no time for those who cling to ever-changing rewritten history on an ongoing basis, those who have access to the hard facts as to which president, with the overwhelming support of his party, plunged the nation into unprecedented debt, but simply accept whatever ludicrous fabrications are proffered by right-wing sources to contradict the realities of George W. Bush’s disastrous administration and the consequences thereof.

I give no credence to those who consistently vote against their own best interests, simply because some loud-mouthed know-nothing has convinced them (without too much convincing necessary) that their best interests lie with the party that has devoted its every endeavor to legislation that favors corporate power over that of the hardworking citizen.

I cannot bring myself to debate the necessity of social safety nets for the homeless, the poverty-stricken, the sick and dying, with people who are literally one paycheck away from financial disaster – and yet cling to the belief that they are somehow immune from the consequences of electing a POTUS who would gladly dissolve those safety nets once in office.

I will not discuss the concept of :Supporting the Troops” with those who happily vote for representatives who deliberately choose to ignore the plight of our veterans, or those who believe there are more important things to spend our money on – like preparing to wage the next war with troops who will again be abandoned once the fighting is done.

Over the past few decades, I have watched in wonder while GOP supporters have devolved into being mindless, shallow, don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts lemmings,
ever anxious to follow their fellow locksteppers off the nearest cliff.

But what was once a matter of idiotic voters has now become a matter of equally idiotic GOP candidates: a VP candidate who couldn’t even fake having read a newspaper while running for the second most important position on the planet, presidential wannabes who pull non-facts out of their asses on a regular basis and tout them as the truth, representatives who run for office on the I’m-as-stupid-as-you-are platform – aided and abetted by a mainstream media that has dumbed itself down in order to appeal to the yes-I-am-TRULY-stupid contingent as often as possible.

What the upcoming election boils down to is not a clash of ideology; it is a clash between the informed and the willfully ignorant, the fact-seekers and the deliberately factually impaired, the intelligent citizen versus the stupid citizen. It’s as simple as that – and it’s a concept that the stupid voter is just – well, too fuckin’ stupid to understand.

As Democrats, we are fully aware that this what we’re up against. This is what we have to focus our attention on and strive to defeat: not a difference of opinion, or an alternate way of seeing how government can best work for all citizens. What we are up against is stupidity, in all its ignorant, misspelled, misled, misinformed, ungrammatical, fact-free glory.

Our candidate is articulate, intelligent and well-informed. He has proven, time and again, his grasp of issues both foreign and domestic, his ability to visualize long-term policies and the benefits thereof, an undeniable desire to move towards humanitarian ideas and ideals, and has garnered the respect of the international community based on all of the aforementioned.

Your candidate, on the other hand, is as blatantly stupid as they come; a man who is incapable of holding a position on any issue for more than twenty-four hours, or articulating a single thought without insulting the very people he is hoping to persuade. And he will no doubt be voted for by the equally stupid, who recognize and support one of their own. Continue reading An Open Letter to Republicans (from an Insufferably Snobby Democrat)

For anyone with a modicum of common sense and an IQ above that of the average house plant, it is difficult to discuss anything that gets said on FOX News without literally laughing your ass off.

With an audience comprised of the incredibly gullible, the proudly ill-informed, and card-carrying members of the Yes-I’m-A-Complete-Dumbass Club™, one can only assume that FOX News watchers have come to expect the kind of baseless, devoid-of-fact rhetoric that its hosts spew on a daily basis.

And, as always, FAUX never fails to disappoint – and Monday morning’s Fox & Friends is just another case in point.

According to F&F’s Steve Douchey (sorry – did I get that name right?), the current outcry that Republicans are waging a War on Women has been fabricated by the Democrats, in an attempt to distract the citizenry from the failure of Obama’s stimulus package.

“The stimulus didn’t work out so well, he’s got a lot of problems. So in the last couple of months, what they have done, the Democrats, is they have invented this phony war on women. They say Republicans are against women, there’s not really a war on women, there’s a war for women because they would like to have as many women vote for their candidate.”

Aside from the fact* (* an inconvenience that is never allowed to see the light of day on FAUX) that the stimulus has created/saved millions of American jobs and avoided another depression, and the fact that Obama isn’t having the kind of “problems” that Douchey’s rhetoric would imply – especially when one looks at the Obama v Romney numbers – we are left with the bald statement that the War on Women is merely a figment of the imaginations of millions of females who are suffering a momentary attack of the vapors, led by the Democratic powers-that-be to the nearest fainting couch where they can bemoan the non-existent assault on their persons, their bodies, and their rights.

Well, Douchey, as an American citizen of the female persuasion, I can tell you that the GOP’s current view of women, and their recent attempts at legalizing not only violations of my body, but my decency as a human being and my equality as a citizen, is real. And the party that sowed that war is about to have what it will inevitably reap shoved firmly up its ass at the polls in November. And you might want to brace yourself, because it’s going to hurt – big time.

There is nothing imaginary nor fabricated about forcing me to submit to invasive vaginal probing as a prerequisite to my obtaining an abortion (which is my legal right), nor forcing me to carry a dead fetus to term despite the emotional and health issues involved, nor forcing me to view ultrasound images of an in-utero fetus I have determined I do not wish to give birth to – the reasons for same being none of anyone’s goddamned business.

In truth, Douchey, what isn’t working out is the GOP’s ill-fated, ill-advised notion that a bunch of Viagra-addicted manly-men sporting drug-induced hard-ons would rally behind the concept of putting little ladies in their place (which seems to be somewhere between a pre-Victorian kitchen and a 1950s episode of Father Knows Best). Bad call. Very bad call. And now they have to live with it. Continue reading Once a Douche, Always a Douche

I just received an email from you and, given that it starts off with “Nance”, I’m assuming we’re now on a first-name basis.

I am still a bit perplexed as to (a) how you got my personal email address, and (b) why you would be sending your campaign literature to me, an until-death-us-do-part Democrat.

However, being as you took the time to contact me, I thought it appropriate to respond.

“Our campaign continues to pick up steam and generate press. In just the past four days, we won the Louisiana primary, received national attention for calling out the New York Times, and received kind words of support from Governor Sarah Palin.”

Well, here’s the thing, Ricky, right off the top: generating press can be a real positive for a candidate hoping to win his party’s nomination for the presidency. However, since most of the press coverage I’ve seen is due to your inane remarks, your abject stupidity, your total non-grasp of the issues, and your blatant hypocrisy, I wouldn’t exactly put that coverage in the plus column.

That being said, I especially appreciated the publicity you, the holier-than-thou Christian boy, garnered by yelling “bullshit!” in response to a reporter’s query. No doubt that went over really well with the Fundies you have been pandering to.

As for the support from Sarah Palin, here’s a word to the wise: She’s a whackjob. I wouldn’t go bragging about her support. That kind of endorsement is something you want to keep under your sweater-vest – if you get my meaning.

“Mitt Romney and his liberal media machine would like nothing better than for us to go away.”

Mitt Romney has a “liberal media machine”? I’m not quite sure what that statement means – along with most of what you say about anything, to be perfectly frank. Mitt Romney is in no way a liberal, and there is no such thing as the “liberal media” – so I’m a bit confused as to where you thought you were headed with that comment. And I have a feeling you’re equally confused – well, you always look so confused, I just assume that you really are.

“But conservatives know we can win — and across the country they are calling, emailing, and telling us they want us to redouble our efforts. You can help us do that — and reaffirm your support for the campaign – by making an online donation of $5, $25, $50, $100 or more right now.”

At this point, I have to ask: If conservatives from all over the country know you can win, and are calling, emailing, and telling you they want you to redouble your efforts, why aren’t they putting their money where their mouths allegedly are? It would seem that if you’re really the people’s choice, they’d be more than happy to cough up a few bucks.

“Today only, we are going to send all online donors a special token of our appreciation. Donate $5 or more before midnight Eastern time, and we will send you a campaign bumpersticker via mail.”

Well, that’s a major disappointment. Here I was ready to send you a million or two – kind of along the lines of a pity fuck – but the check won’t clear until tomorrow, so I guess I’m shit out of luck. And I really wanted that bumpersticker, too. My neighbors already think I’m nuts – I would have enjoyed confirming it for them.

“It’s time conservatives take a stand. We don’t need to accept what the mainstream media and establishment tell us to think.”

It’s not the mainstream media who are telling Republicans what to think, Ricky – it’s FOX News. Maybe you should ask your party’s own propaganda network to give you a break, and extol your many virtues – oh, except they’re too busy telling everyone that Romney’s nomination is a done deal. We all know what sheep Republican voters are; too bad the shepherds aren’t the least bit interested in what you have to say.

“I am convinced that whoever can activate grassroots conservatives will not only secure the nomination – but will have the honor of defeating Barack Obama in the fall.”

I don’t know what you’re smokin’, dude, but it’s obviously some primo shit. At this point in the game, your party can’t even count on your conservative base. Now that the GOP has pissed off women, union members, the unemployed, the college-educated, the disabled, veterans, and everyone who is benefiting from Obamacare, even your once loyal voters are dwindling down to a precious few. Continue reading Ricky, PLEASE Lose This Number

You never heard of the O. J. Simpson syndrome? Maybe the literary tradition of the tragic mulatto is familiar? Have you seen the late night or Black History Month reruns of the movie classic, Imitation of Life? Or perhaps you have read Richard Wright’s powerful novel, Native Son?

What all of these ideas, experiences, and creative works have in common is race and sex. They mark the attitudes and norms of different points and plateaus in our national dialogue about the meaning and acceptability, and the failures, when race and sex share a common social ground.

Up until fifty years ago, the thinking and tragedies of race and sex all ran in one direction. Culturally it was assumed the mix of race and sex resulted in toxic failures and always involved white males with black females. From slavery, this tradition produced what was called “the yard child,” a child who lived among the enslaved who had been parented by a white slaveholder. This tradition enters Presidential politics with Thomas Jefferson, and was later vigorously denied by both the historians and descendants of Jefferson, who concocted all sorts of alternatives to Jefferson parenting children by Sally Hemmings (the DNA virtually proves he did), she herself the daughter born of a relationship between holder and slave.

Thus, the tradition of the tragic mulatto emerged, generally a woman of refinement, grace and manners, thoughtful, caring, light-skinned to the point of easily passing for white, but denied opportunity because she was legally black. The implied loophole was that discrimination and oppression were acceptable to darker-featured blacks, but those whose who resembled whites should be given a pass. A foot in both worlds, today called multiracial, was historically seen as tragic, a source of alienation and rejection—and highlighted and projected unequal treatment for a woman, as a lover, mistress, wife, or worker, albeit slave or free. In the movies, Imitation of Life and later Queen (with Halle Berry) brought tears, with no change or challenge to the norm.

Harlem’s former Congress Representative, the legendary Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. spoke in his autobiography of his grandfather accepting and raising the child of the man who had whipped him in slavery, and marrying the woman who had sired the child. His family history had a deep impact on his faith and politics and his impatience with injustice.

But Richard Wright, the Mississippi-born writer, saw the problem from a profoundly different viewpoint. His socially marginal literary character, Bigger Thomas, unskilled, impulsive, poor, kills and cuts off the head of a young white woman, stuffing her body in a furnace in one of the most provocative and unsentimental scenes in American literature. It foreshadowed the O.J. Simpson syndrome.

The broad idea of the O.J. Simpson syndrome is that interracial love leads to personal destruction and bad societal ends. It is countered by the cult of white womanhood, especially strong in the civil rights era, when a rallying cry against equal opportunity pointedly asked: would you want your daughter to marry one [a black]? White women were not to abandon their own kind. To do so invited peril.

What has this to do with Presidential politics in 2012? Aren’t we past these outmoded considerations? Besides, the Obamas constitute a strong black family unit. I may be overreaching, but I see a cultural embed in Newt’s wife standing next to him. I see a subtext in the ferocity of political attacks which are visceral and invasive against women and their bodies. I see in very ugly and scatological tweets aimed at Michele Obama and even her children. I see an impotence that is hate. I see it in the way that has made the greatest family unit ever to occupy the White House into a sexless, invisible couple, when all their forms of love, from agape to eros, are so transparent that we watch astounded by this relationship which is as solid as a rock and ridiculously, obviously hot. Continue reading Digging Deeper: Race, Sex, and the Obamas